Because union busting is the plan, has been from the get go, and we are dealing with crazy people. There are no reasonable conservatives- no one reasonable would continue to self-identify with this freak show. Horror of horrors, should Mitch Daniels get elected as Sully seems to be hoping, and the Republicans have the House and the Presidency and possibly the Senate, Sullivan will figure it out.

Agreed here. Sullivan is never going to figure out because he seems to keep assuming that “tough-guy” belt-tighteners always have the best interests of people at heart, instead of the possibility that they might be a) idiots, b) corrupt, c) actually, cartoonishly, moustache-twirlingly evil, or d) all three.

I know you like the guy, but how many more stupid questions does Sullivan have to ask before you stop devoting mental bandwidth to answering them? His ideological blinders seem to blind him to enough fairly obvious things that I’ve stopped understanding why anyone thinks he’s that smart anymore.

Frank Rich has a good concise rundown on the big pic of what the wingnuts are up to, and their current mental status, which begets them to play with fire.

This is no long game, this is the charge of the light brigade of maniacs with a little power, and little concern of who gets hurt to preserve their viewpoint, which is and always has been power and control and money which are the mutual three horseman of the triumvirate of right wing philosophy.

They can’t be reasoned with, nor bargained with, until either the country, or the object of their frustration, liberal progressivism, is dead dead dead.

Paying attention to what Megan and Sully say is just like torture. It isn’t rational, it doesn’t provide accurate information, and it isn’t healthy. It’s just a means by which the torturer gains satisfaction inflicting their deranged ideologies on the recipient.

What you, Doug and Tom have is the equivalent of bloggers’ Stockholm Syndrome.

The GOP strategic aim is simple enough. If they can abolish union collective-bargaining rights, they can undermine the automatic payment of dues to the public-employee union treasuries. Shrinking those treasuries and reducing the union structure and membership will make it harder for Democrats and their allies to communicate directly with workers.
And under the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, unions — like corporations — are free to spend as much as they want directly advocating for a candidate. That makes the math even more urgent as the 2012 election season approaches.

I don’t believe I’m engaging in hyperbole to suggest the GOP is pushing for a one-party state at this point. Destroy the ability of the opposition to get funds or protect workers while flooding the airwaves with your propaganda.

I wonder if we get an equivalent of the Reichstag fire at some point, seeing as how the GOP loves to call the Dems Marxists and Jihadi Loving Shari’a apologists…

How in the world is it the conservative position to demand that unions agree to let the legislature rewrite their contract to reduce their wages and take away union dues? It’s incredible that property and contract are so sacrosanct, yet one apparently has an inalienable right to take whatever job one wants without interacting with unions, and I have no right to join a union and contract with an employer that recognizes the union, agrees to withhold dues from paychecks, and refuses to hire outside the union.

I don’t believe I’m engaging in hyperbole to suggest the GOP is pushing for a one-party state at this point. Destroy the ability of the opposition to get funds or protect workers while flooding the airwaves with your propaganda.

This is well known. It’s analogous to what Rahmbo was doing in the WH. Getting business to direct funds to him/his political group so they could then funnel to candidates who would be loyal to him after election.
It’s been a long slow burn to get here, and the unlamented DLC was no god damn help.

Sullivan’s great trick is and always has been to use his strong command of the English language as a veneer over his provincial concerns. Deficits, SSM, the HIV travel ban, and something about how he wants a Tory president so very, very much.

I really do wonder if it transcends his level of comprehension to truly and seriously scrutinize power structures and interest/power relationships. Do this, and what is happening in Wisconsin is incredibly obvious.

@ornery curmudgeon: Don’t knock ’em dog. If Sully and McMegan didn’t exist they’d either have to invent them or post a bunch of ceiling cat pics.
And given Tunch’s ridonkulous girth…the ceiling cat routine wouldn’t last very long.

I guess Sully is completely willing to overlook Daniel’s performance as Bush’s Budget director, taking huge surpluses and turning them into huge deficits. Republicans only care about deficits when they are out of power.

I’ll say it again–we in Wisconsin are not Middle Eastern enough for Sullivan. He’s not impressed with our use of social networking because somehow it’s more impressive over there. I’m still waiting for Sullivan to ask people to turn their browsers Badger Red. Did I also mention that none of the 100,000 people at yesterday’s rally in Madison were Sarah Palin, or simultaneously transporting from the Middle East? That’s why he could care less. We’re just not exotic enough. (Send pizza to the protesters–it helps.)

@celticdragonchick:
This has always been the plan. It was the plan when Newt took over. It was the plan Rove’s Math was going to clinch. They want their Permanent Republican Majority and dirty tricks to get it have never bothered them.

What’s different now is that they’ve convinced the stupidest portion of the population that this one party state is real and their natural birthright if they just sweep up the odds and ends. The ones who do realize that they’re losing are becoming desperate. Either way, they’re waving their freak flag just as hard as they can and demanding absolute victory, nothing less.

Sully bought the “fiscal concern” of the new GOP hook, line, and sinker.

Its all a pretext for destroying unions, defunding PBS, Planned Parenthood, etc. Its about taking money away from regulatory agencies (or destroying the agencies outright), so that they can’t keep tabs on the quality of the food we eat or make sure they don’t dump toxic waste into our rivers. Its about selling off public utilities for next to nothing to “efficient” private companies, who then use their GOP-provided monopolies to screw over the rest of us with insane utility bills.

But poor Sully has this notion of what “Conservatism” should be and this blinds him to the reality of the true nature of “fiscal conservatism.”

@Uloborus: Exactly. We are observing the (hopefully) last stand of the angry white rich man. It’s a largely conscious attempt to rig the political system into a permanent state of oligarchy in the last seconds before their collective pasty blue-veined hand is dragged from the levers of power by the sheer gravitational pull of history/demographics.

@Nylund: I think you missed one major pretext, it’s also a pretext to get working-class Americans to settle for low wages and a lifestyle akin to workers in developing countries. Shared sacrifice. We need to stay competitive!

Also, can we get an “Andrew Sullivan Watch” as a rotating title on this blog?

It’s a largely conscious attempt to rig the political system into a permanent state of oligarchy in the last seconds before their collective pasty blue-veined hand is dragged from the levers of power by the sheer gravitational pull of history/demographics.

I’ve always been interested to know how the pasty white man is running the oligarchy in China or India? That’s quite the accomplishment.

@Bob Loblaw:
They have their own oligarchies. Which, come to think of it, are heavily racially motivated as well. But neither of them vote much in the US.

@Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
Alas, I wish it was the last stand. They’re on the edge of losing their most heartfelt cultural issues. Gay marriage could be nationally legal in the next few years, marijuana legalization is actually becoming a mainstream issue, and Christianity gets swept little by little out of the government sphere. In about 20 years it’s reasonable to think our ‘vice’ laws may be unrecognizable. And now that we’ve had one black president he’s not likely to be the last. They’ve lost all those battles, and abortion’s an issue they can only lose ground on as well.

But there’ll be some new set of conservative cultural ideals slipping out of their hands in a few decades. They’re just feeling the long, slow slide of history towards liberalism right now and it’s freaking them out.

I guess American non-whites are just inherently superior to foreign non-whites, then, and would never be prone to predatory capitalism and corruption themselves. Good to know.

It’s amusing to watch racial determinism be joined with progressive utopianism on the left. I look forward to our new majority-minority overlords ushering in a new era of benevolent philanthrocapitalism for all.

@Bob Loblaw:
Oh, you’re whinging that some kind of reverse racism is going on in these arguments? Eh. I have mixed feelings. The tribalism inherent in the conservative movement is brutally obvious. It’s so very, VERY ‘us vs. them’ that they’ve sucked in the racists too. Some of the racism boldly displayed on FOX these last two years has been appalling. But I personally think we’d be looking at close to the same thing without racism being involved. The Other they are united in hating are Democrats, not different skin colors.

The moneyed elites who’ve thrown in with this movement of batshittia are almost universally white, I’ll grant, but they hate poor people, not non-whites especially. When someone throws in ‘white’ as part of the descriptor I don’t sweat it. The current conservative movement IS heavily dominated by white older males, and #2 are white older females. So it’s not like there isn’t reason to be suspicious that it’s about racism, but I think hate is colorblind.

We are observing the (hopefully) last stand of the angry white rich man. It’s a largely conscious attempt to rig the political system into a permanent state of oligarchy in the last seconds before their collective pasty blue-veined hand is dragged from the levers of power by the sheer gravitational pull of history/demographics.

You let me know how that quote isn’t just a high-falutin’ way of saying that minorities = magic. This isn’t even about white people or their historical contribution to society and its problems.

I guess after the gravitation pull of history drags white people down, things will just instantly get better. Somehow. Like flipping a switch. That’s how things worked in post-colonial regimes across the world, right? I’m glad it’s such a fait accompli. If conservatism and reactionary politics could just be eradicated so easily, wouldn’t it have happened somewhere by now?

Sully is being deliberately obtuse. Everybody fucking knows now that union busting is what this is all about.

As usual, Sully has his head so far up his fucking ass that it makes it easier than usual to make his usual disingenuous comments that makes him appear far more moderate, and informed, than her really is.

Letter to the Wisconsin Republicans From a Conservative Prison Guard
Submitted by zelda on Sun, 02/27/2011 – 00:21
Good Afternoon All,
I just wanted to voice my extreme displeasure to all who voted for Walker’s Budget Repair bill!!!!! Do any of you know who is affected and what they really do for a living and what they make? I know that you all can’t possibly believe in your hearts that this is the best thing for the state of Wisconsin!! Why then are you all following like little lambs??? I just don’t get it!!

The reason the word “white” was salient in that remark was because being white has up until now been an important multiplier of political power.

And up until now exploiting the fear that non-whites will threaten that element of power in the society has been a great way to gain political power.

So it’s not the fact that the coming demographics are going to be gradually changing to the non-white end of the color spectrum, it’s the fact that what you could call the Power of Being White in the past will no longer be so powerful, and the ability to exploit fears of the non-white will not have so much political resonance.

Unlike history, however, partisan majorities, or even periods of partisan parity, have ended fairly frequently.

The GOP’s political stances over the past 20 years – gay-bashing, immigrant bashing, minority-bashing, Obama-bashing, McCain-nominating – have made it the party of old, white people. That’s not a good position to be in. For one thing, it means that your voters keep dying while your opposition gets stronger with every 18th birthday party. For another, it means that the demographic trends this country is undergoing represent a constant erosion of your support.

So, to try and head off this impending doom, they’re working to rig the donations game through initiatives like the Citizens United ruling and the elimination of unions.

I wish Sully a long, healthy life, albeit one in which he is shamed into isolation for his ridiculous stances on The Bell Curve and Iraq war opposition; his Palin panty-drawer sniffing; “free market” fetishism; and any of the dozens of other stupid positions he’s devoted his considerable energies to.

I’ve noticed the same thing. Normally (well, as ‘normal’ as the GOP can be) they have one main ‘hate’ theme that they use to fan the flames and maybe one secondary issue to throw up with it. Now they seem to be using the shotgun approach and are blasting away with every hate theme they can dig out.

I’m not so sure that this ‘plan’ of theirs will pay off for them this time. When they focus on the one or two issues as their theme for an elections cycle, it’s easy for the other they have hated on in the past to just let things drop since their group isn’t in the sights of hate in that election cycle. It’s almost like they get a temporary respite from the hate and gladly take it.

This time the GOP is hitting all of the buttons at once and that is going to piss off a lot of people at the same time. In a way I really hope they keep it up and let everyone get a taste of being hated on at the same time. There are a lot of union people who are conservative and it’s shortsighted of the goopers to paint every union member as a rabid liberal who only wants to leach off of the wealth of the powerful capitalists.

I hope they keep the assault against unions up since there is nothing else that says “we hate the middle class” like that. Walker sold out to get where he is and he knows that once he gets tossed out on his ass he will have a comfortable retirement collecting wingnut welfare from the Kochs and their mindless wingnut supporters. If anything, Walker is trying to prove to his corporate benefactors that he is the guy in Wisconsin who will deliver the state to them.

I’ve always been interested to know how the pasty white man is running the oligarchy in China or India? That’s quite the accomplishment.

I’m confused — what do the actions of Chinese or Indian citizens and governments have to do with the actions of American citizens and government? You do realize we’re talking about three different countries with different histories, different cultures, and different political systems, right? The Chinese haven’t quite managed to buy us lock, stock and barrel just yet, so the US is still a separate country with its own culture.

Or is your argument that a Chinese-American or Indian-American thinks exactly the same way as a Chinese or Indian citizen so therefore there’s no way that an American of Chinese descent would behave and think differently than a citizen of China? That’s the only possible reason I could see for you insisting that the actions of rich white men in the US have no more effect on the US than the actions of the Chinese government do.

The reason the word “white” was salient in that remark was because being white has up until now been an important multiplier of political power in the United States.

Fix’d, because that’s where Bob’s confusion seems to lie. He doesn’t seem to understand that we’re talking about the politics and demographic trends of the United States, not doing a comparison/contrast between every country in the world.

I’m confused—what do the actions of Chinese or Indian citizens and governments have to do with the actions of American citizens and government?

It means it’s all existential, and all relative, and all equal with respect to eternity, and everyone is going to die anyways, or something along those lines. Except this time, the straw man he built of himself, looked something like Jim Demint, wringing his hands over things getting worse when minorities take control and start eating white babies.

Financial oligarchies know no color but green. And they can outsurvive the Republican Party without breaking a sweat. The Republican Party doesn’t interest me. The demise of the Republican Party != an instant egalitarian candyland free of class resentment and cultural reactionaries.

Perhaps you meant to say financial oligarchies allow money to sometimes moderate their color consciousness. Or, enough money will facilitate their tepid tolerance of the occasional non-white. Was that it ? ‘Cause, dude, to say otherwise is to let slip the fact that you’re not from around these parts. Or you’re a cat’s paw…

I wish Sully a long, healthy life, albeit one in which he is shamed into isolation for his ridiculous stances on The Bell Curve and Iraq war opposition; his Palin panty-drawer sniffing; “free market” fetishism; and any of the dozens of other stupid positions he’s devoted his considerable energies to.

Fuck that. Let him soon die poor, alone and in severe pain from AIDS without health insurance, with jeering teabaggers gaybashing him to his last breath.

Gods only know how many he’s condemned to that fate with his rimming of the fecal right.

So let’s just assume that the Koch brothers and their ilk achieve their Galtian “Freedom” utopia of a truly frightening Darwinian jungle, where we are sliced and diced by race, region, ethnicity, age, religion, yawning wealth gaps, and any other dividing wedge you can think of. Then what? What do the plutocrats think will happen to them while the rest of us serfs are busy slicing each other’s throats over diminishing crumbs from their tables? I have never understood what their endpoint is. There is only so much surplus value that can be extracted from a massively impoverished, unemployed labor force; only so much dwindled purchasing power that a wiped-out middle class of any color and creed can wield. Who are they gonna sell their products to? How do you play Russian roulette on the stock market with non-existent 401ks or 403bs? Can they extort obscene profits from selling luxury stuff to each other only in their ranks of the tiny 1% population of the uber-wealthy?

One cannot but conclude that this generation of oligarchs, plutocrats etc. is profoundly stupid, blindingly nihilistic, and never learned the lessons of history. There was a reason the rise of the Middle class in the mid-twentieth century ENABLED capitalism to flourish unimpeded for decades, and created the much needed buffer between the ultra-rich and the poor. There is a reason social safety nets exist in order to quell unrest among the poor, and make it possible for the rich to enjoy their wealth in relative peace. Without the Middle class to LABOR at and CONSUME the goods and services produced by corporations, as well as social safety nets, there would be no SECURITY for CAPITALIST wealth accumulation. It’s as simple as that!! So why else would the plutocrats want to kill the very geese that lay their golden eggs and instead literally assemble such lethal social nuclear weapons in their own midst?

Well, perhaps they think they can retreat to some haven in some remote corner of this globe to enjoy their loot and escape the poison of social unrest. Really? Physical distance in this ultra-wired age, when all it takes is a hacker and a keystroke in some basement and they can watch their wealth wiped out in one nanosecond? Plus have they taken a look at what is happening in the Middle East and rumbling elsewhere, where poets chanting in Tahrir Square can read tweets from protesting Wisconsinite public workers?

Until recently the titans of global multinational corporations, energy cartels, and their government lackeys could count on a form of “shifting cultivation,” in which they could farm one society, milk it dry of all resources and wealth, drive wages to subterranean levels, then close shop and move elsewhere on the globe to lather, rinse, repeat. That is, “Third Worldizing” labor conditions around the globe. It worked and may yet still work a little while longer as there are still some “free zones” yet to be exploited around the globe. But for how much longer? There are no new virgin territories, no new frontiers. Even in China, the cost of “low cost” labor is fast rising.

@TenguPhule: I still say that it’s a worse fate to wish Sully a long life during which he has to live with the results of his cynicism and dishonesty–and that it’s our role to remind him daily of it. Eventually it will catch up with him when he’s no longer a novelty act–a gay foreigner that the Right can occasionally love.

But I know close relatives of a few Iraq War vets (and a few displaced Iraqis) who do wish a harsher fate for Sully. And I begrudge them nothing. Sully is a, quite literally, the worst element of our civilized society. I only hope that he has a sense of shame.

If we’re going to share our fantasies about what happens to Andrew Sullivan, why not hope that he pulls a David Brock, sees the error of his ways, and works to make amends by devoting his professional life to the pursuit of liberal, pro-labor, pro-Democratic politics?

@celticdragonchick: I know. I got out of the boat and nearly drowned. I was so shocked that someone who calls our lady of the constant boxvintage haze the blogger who “has had the best coverage,” that I had trouble. “Ann’s the best” is not a sentiment likely to find much favor here at the bastion of the best inanity on the web.
Gaaaah.

Sullivan’s long-running schtick is to proclaim with distress his sudden revelation that the Republicans aren’t the nice, polite gentlemen he always knew them to be!

Next week he’ll have reset to his default position, and be taken by surprise yet again at another Republican action, unbecoming to their true virtuous nature of course.

Somehow he never learns or even remembers, and never repudiates the integrity-Republican image he created in his mind decades ago while swooning at Ronald Reagan. He never wavers in his allegiance to these fantasy creations, bearing them a loyalty they would never extend to him.

You can conclude either that Charlie Brown learns faster regarding Lucy’s football place-kicking than Sullivan does; or that he’s found a profitable storyline as the occasionally wavering, but always returning to the fold, loyal minority helpmate of the Right, and will repeat it with the nauseating regularity of a Little House on the Prairie plotline.

@Cacti:
Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is defined by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as “…a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”

Antisocial personality disorder is sometimes referred to as psychopathy or sociopathy.

@the idler:
…oh, right. He’s a native British Thatcherite, isn’t he? It all makes SENSE now. The Republicans hurt him because they love him. That’s how he KNOWS they love him, because they stomp on gays everywhere they can. And that’s how he knows they love the rest of us. He doesn’t approve of them hitting him, but he knows that they’re good people.

And he’s all over fiscal discipline and austerity, right? It’s not abuse, it’s TOUGH LOVE.

@joe from Lowell: You are wise and compassionate. I am bloodthirsty and vindictive, but would allow the man to redeem himself…as long as it involved seppuku in front of the Vietnam memorial. There’s a long line of people who should join him there. But I’d allow Bobo Brooks to OD on sleeping pills, or develop a severe meth habitat…something more in keeping with his bravery and rectitude.

Seriously, I do not care if these exemplars of the failure of the western media experiment live or DIAF. I just want them to cease political activity.

As long as we’re on the subject, how come we gots us so many furriner Konservative Pundits? Krauthammer and Steyn and Frum are Canadian, and we’ve got Sully and Hitchens, and Tina Brown and her aptly named cyber-rag.

Can’t Amerikkkan Kkkonservatives come up with their OWN batshit crazy pundits anymore? Did they need Rupert Murdoch to show them how to be “patriots”?

I got into an argument about this shit with my doctor friend tonight and it devolved pretty quickly. I guess that’s pent-up resentment over the fact that health care workers have never been able to unionize (and if they could, medical residents would demand and get better treatment, and/or medical education in this country wouldn’t be such a fucking sham…just saying). That aside, I think he’s correct in the fact that employer based health-care has been the fucked up factor that affects employee mobility and is one of the most goofed up things currently influencing American society. There’s a reason globalization has affected Americans more than any other Western society, and the history of union busting is part of that, as well as the fact that no unions in America were able to influence a protectionist economy for our manufacturing base.

The problem is that both conservatives and liberals are right in some social sense. Entitlements for a job well done cannot last forever into infinity in a capitalist system that is subject to the vagueness of “teh Free Market.” However, the social safety net cannot be cut free completely, because nobody, including investors and bankers, wants to be subjected to the true cost of the busts of capitalism. (Which is to let all of the banks, and thus the stock market, fail utterly.)

A compromise must be reached. The uninsured are a drag on the insured…that must be corrected. We must build up and protect a manufacturing base the same way we protect our agricultural system. We should invest in education, infrastructure, and technology/defense, while cutting back on foreign wars and unnecessary boots on the ground. And inevitably, the American Dream will have to be scaled back. Which means more grandparents living with the kids, smaller homes, and less palatial mansions on the outskirts of town.

The middle class and the Greatest Generation should be seen for what they are as aberrations, rather than the norm. Only when the “middle class” joins the “poor” will the backlash against the current Robber Barons truly begin. Because the “Stock Market” as a path to infinite wealth is a myth, like any other myth, yet we have a system that creates wealth out of ones and zeros in imaginary money every day. The role of the middle class was to act as “moderates” and “investors” and “independents” who had the luxury of choosing between political parties in America has it suited their own interests. But in truly relevant terms, there is no middle class. There are the wealthy and the poor, the winners and the losers.

Yet all the Randian glibertarians are there to remind you that the wealthy have earned their money through the “divine right of kings,” I’m sorry, please forgive me, “True capitalistic values,” while the poor exist because “God willed it,” oh I apologize, I mixed them up, because “Fuck them, I got mine.”

Thus, nothing in human history has really changed. Resources will get scarce, there will be wars, people will die, and we will not care and approve because we will feel our survival wills it.

I still say that it’s a worse fate to wish Sully a long life during which he has to live with the results of his cynicism and dishonesty—and that it’s our role to remind him daily of it.

Nope, He has no fucking second thoughts, him and every reptile brained GOP balllicker needs to die slowly and painfully because they will NEVER EVER admit that they are complete fucking monsters without a shred of compassion or empathy.

I can not forgive and I can’t forget. Let their lives be short and their deaths of them and theirs be long and drawn out.